


Faster Than Light

by catty_the_spy



Series: #verse [11]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Terrible Jokes, mental hijacking, sentient starships, too much tea, vagueness probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is unending. It ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faster Than Light

Days in FTL: ten.

Young drags his head up, reminding himself that he can’t meet Telford looking like he just rolled out of bed, even if he _is_ just rolling out of bed. Pain crawls up his shoulders and into his skull.

“Requesting additional resources: oxygen, iron, copper, quartz…”

He sighs.

“…nitrogen, titanium, carbon…”

He turns the lights on, off, and on again. The flow of muttered words from Rush comes to an abrupt halt.

“How long have you been awake?”

“What time is it?” Rush asks, grabbing at Young’s wrist. He lets Rush turn the watch face in the right direction. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” He rubs his hands over his eyes, trying to muster up the energy to stand. There are claws in his brain, reaching…reaching…no. He’s awake. He’s _awake_.

He’s going to be late for his meeting with Telford. Again.

“This is untenable.”

“It’s just for a little while longer.” Rush had said something similar a week ago.

They were close to reconnecting with the seedship, after it had left them to gather supplies. Destiny hadn’t taken the separation well.

“You should eat.”

“You’ll be late.”

“I know.”

Neither of them moves.

 

Armed with a scarf and a pair of gloves, Young meets Telford in the stone room.

“You look like shit.”

“Hello to you, too.”

“What the hell’s going on out here?”

Young shrugs a shoulder, leading the way to the nearest conference room. “The ship has separation anxiety.”

Telford makes a disgusted noise. “Have you tried talking to it?”

“We can’t.”

“Atlantis can send fucking _emails_ ; what do you mean you _can’t_?”

“Emails?”

Telford glares.

“The closest we can get to communicating with Destiny is asking it to stop and let us resupply and hoping it doesn’t mess with our heads anymore than it already has. You’ve been here for ten minutes; I’ll give you twenty before you start squinting through a headache.”

“What is going _on_?” Telford asks again.

There aren’t many good ways to explain.

 

 

Panic crawls up his throat, tangling in his vocal chords and twisting up his spine, in between his teeth and grating at him like the stubborn piece of gristle that he can’t quite…

This is stupid. This is nothing.

“At least give us short allotments. Give people thirty minutes to contact their families.”

“That’s not possible,” Telford says, his voice lost amongst the hum of the ship, the clack-clack-clack of robot feet against the metal floor.

“Give us something David. Is isolating us really protecting anyone from the Lucian Alliance?”

Telford sighs. He taps his fingers against the table – Scott’s fingers, while the lieutenant delivers Camille’s repot to the IOA.

Young thinks about being in Telford’s body, everything just strikingly off, the dissonance lurking beneath the surface to catch where least expected. He presses his fingers together.

“My hands are tied,” Telford says, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I’ll try…maybe we can have a few of the first aid seminars reinstated using SG personnel, but that’d be it, and whoever they switched with would need to be able to assist the scientist on earth with their research. That’s the best I can give you.”

Anything is better than what they’ve got. He’ll take it.

 

“Emails?” Camille says. “I knew the city was communicating, but…”

“Yeah. I know how you feel.” Young sighs, trying to keep his eyes open. The warmth of the tea isn’t helping. “According to Rush, the ship has the capability for more refined contact, but not the…” Young makes an uncertain gesture with his cup meant to encompass all of Destiny’s issues.

Camille hums her understanding. Her hair is unusually messy and she’s staring listlessly into her cup. “We’ll see what we can do when we rejoin the seedship. Perhaps the support will give Destiny the ability to engage in more productive contact.”

“Perhaps.”

There is a lull in their conversation. Young can hear a heated argument about women’s underwear coming from the other side of the room. Despite TJ’s insistence on regular meals, about half the crew is avoiding the mess; watching the repair robots work around the mural wasn’t good dinner theatre.

“I’ve finished coming up with a new work roster,” Camille says. “Aside from a few adjustments for preference and skill level, it’s not too different from the old one. Sanchez and Wade have changed places; Morris and Quinn will assist the science team with a few of the less delicate repairs. Barnes Greer and Volker are in shuttle training. I have a trial group for Honey Wagon; next month we can cycle out and make adjustments.”

“How are you rotating the honey wagon group?”

The ship shudders. Camille tightens her grip on her cup and sighs.

“I know,” Young says. “The repair robots are going to take care of that when we drop out. So Rush says.”

“I’m concerned. Dr. Rush seems less…he’s more unhinged than usual.”

“I know,” Young says again. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s the ship. I hope it’s the ship. Its projections affect him more intensely; I don’t know if that’s because he was less stable to begin with or-”

“-or because he’s closer to the ship than the rest of us.” The ship shakes and Camille shakes with it. Hot tea sloshes over her hands but she doesn’t flinch.

“I’ll talk to him,” she says, looking sharper than she has in days. “At the very least he’ll try to show his face more.”

“So we hope. He’s….” Young shifts through descriptors both positive and negative before settling on “He’s the wild cat, walking his wild lone.”

Camille grins. “All places are alike to him?”

Young chuckles and nods. The pain curls behind his eyes.

 

The walls morph and curl in, threatening to crush – no. He’s awake, dammit.

“-coming in for….for…” TJ shakes herself, blinking rapidly. “Coming…hold on.”

She sits.

The second infirmary is bigger. The beds have a magnetic seal and release that keeps them from sliding. There are three private evaluation rooms in front, and an office and a store room in back. At least, theoretically. The infirmary on the seedship had been scrapped to make more repair robots and they hadn’t found the one in Destiny yet. If the plans are correct – if the plans –

TJ wipes carefully at the corners of her eyes.

“You’re still on light duty,” she says, her voice thick but firmly professional. “If there are no new problems you’ll be up to full next week.”

He nods, slowly. A controlled forward motion of the head and a careful return to the standard upright position. The infirmary is bright and sharp edged, and he’s going to lend a hand in hydroponics when he leaves.

TJ gives him a cup of bitter black tea. “For the headache,” she explains.

He gives her another nod. Head down and up, then drink the tea and try not to make a face.

The pain uncurls in tiny increments, and even the dull throb that makes his eyes cross is better than what he’d had before.

“We’re going to do another push,” Young says. “When we ah, when we meet up with the seedship, we’re going to put together a few teams and try to reach the second infirmary.”

“That’s good.”

He remembers, almost like a dream, watching the light hit her curls and turn them into strands of honey-colored silk. It’s like looking at the memories of a different person.

Fifteen days in FTL.

 

“He’s been like this for hours,” Chloe whispers, a shaky pillar of heat at his shoulder. “He didn’t react when I touched him. We weren’t sure whether to get you or TJ.”

“You did good,” Young says just as quietly, trying to be reassuring. “I think all of us need something warm to drink. Could you-”

“Yeah.” Chloe hesitates, concern coming off her in sticky waves. She jogs down the corridor.

Rush’s breath is fogging up the screen of the console. Young pulls him up right, placing his hands on his lap. Then he turns off the console.

Rush jerks as if he’s been hit, nearly falling off his chair.

Young waits with a hand on his shoulder. He’s never sure whether touching Rush will help him or hurt him, but it’s a chance worth taking. Sometimes it grounds him.

 

Rush is breathing quick and shallow at his back, but he wants Young to think he’s sleeping. Neither of them moves.

 

“Are you okay?”

Young pries his eyes open. Eli hovers in the doorway. Young straightens up.

“I’m fine. How are you? You should be asleep right now.”

Eli shrugs. “Can’t. Ancient madlibs in my dreams; I figured I’d drop by Storage Three and pick up some supplies.”

He lifts a bundle of fabric – not Destiny make. It’d been recovered on a savage mission; robbing the dead was easy when you needed what they’d left behind.

“I thought you’d be working on your documentary.”

“That too. I got distracted organizing footage from the seminars. I’ve watched the cheese session about fifty times.”

Young feels his face slowly shift into a grin. “If that ever becomes an option, you’ll be at the top of the list.”

Eli sits next to him, staring into the purple light of FTL. “Which of our twenty- _seven_ movies should we watch this week? Chloe and I are kind of stuck.”

“Park couldn’t help?”

“She’s been kind of obsessed with her tree, and Chloe’s a bit preoccupied with the Lt Scott right now? She said she talked to you about it? Not counting me, that’s everyone on the RMC. The Matrix movies are obviously out, but that still leaves us with a lot to choose from. Well, okay, Fellowship is out too. The power of the ring aside, we’ve watched that so much that even I’m starting to get tired of it. Also, I’ve been thinking about broadcasting music over shipwide – sort of like Destiny Radio.”

“Shipwide barely works for emergencies.”

Eli’s enthusiasm is a tad manic, but refreshing all the same. They’ve all been a bit manic, lately.

Twenty days in FTL.

Eli gestures one handed, rattling off the benefits of crowd-sourced background music. There are plans for original compositions buried in his monologue. Young can’t help but picture poetry night set to music. There isn’t enough alcohol in the universe.

“Make some instruments, fit rehearsals into our off duty time, and there you go! We already have the means of recording the audio. It’s perfect.”

Young relaxes into the flow of talk and lets his eyes slip out of focus.

 

They’re doing an inventory of all their supplies. It’s busy work. One of the contests had been to supply useful suggestions, and the winner was a survival pack. Each crewmember would be issued a pouch containing two fishhooks and line, dried food, a fire starter, and a length of rope. Canteens were already standard for any venture off-ship, and the supply of knives was limited. That was being remedied, but in the meantime, it won’t hurt to go over everything a second time, to count and recount until they were certain that all was accounted for. At the very least, it’ll give them something to do with their hands.

“We’re moving the glass to Storage Six,” Scott says, rubbing at a spot on the back of his head. “Metal and wood will go to Storage Seven, closer to the workshop, and I can’t decide between Storage Two and Storage Four for our foraging supplies.”

“Storage Two would be better,” Young tells him. “It’s closer to the gateroom.”

They’re standing on opposite sides of a midair display. Young crosses to stand beside him.

“I’ve also got a few requests for new quarters and shift changes?”

Scott looks hunted and tired. Some of it is the ship, but some of it has been going on long before.

“Have a seat, Lieutenant.”

  


“I have good news and bad news.”

“Don’t draw this out.”

“I was able to get you first aide and food preservation.”

His head aches so fiercely it makes his eyes cross. He thinks about his body turning not his body changing into not

“I have good news and bad news,” Telford says. He hesitates and Young tries not to growl. He pinches the bridge of his nose instead, firmly rubs his thumb across the bone surrounding his eye, trying to relieve the pressure that wouldn’t go away.

“Don’t draw this out.” He manages to say it calmly.

“I’ve been able to get you thirty minutes for first aid and food preservation.”

“That’s good. An hour a week is-”

“Thirty minutes _total_ , Everett. You can divide it into fifteen minutes each or alternate between them, but you don’t have more than thirty minutes a week.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do with thirty minutes?”

“The security risk is too great-”

“What security risk? You think someone in the program is a spy for the Alliance? What would they learn out here that they could use? That we’re stranded? They knew that already!”

“That’s not my decision to make!” Telford’s glare looks wrong on Lt Scott’s face. This was too sensible for a ship induced nightmare, but maybe – just maybe –

“Thirty minutes,” Telford repeats firmly. “You have to decide _today_ how you’re going to use the time.”

Some of the old sessions had run as long as three hours. They’d had seminars on more immediate concerns like carpentry, and some on tree grafting and beekeeping.

And now they have thirty minutes for first aid or food preparation or both.

There’s something sour burning a hole in his gut, but Young does his best to ignore it.

 

“I told him we’d alternate,” Young says, swirling the remains of the tea in his cup. “We were short on time and the decision couldn’t wait.”

“That’s what I would have voted for anyway,” Camille says. “Fifteen minutes wouldn’t have been enough time. We can have thirty minutes of outside instruction, and then thirty minutes of review.”

She pulls out five pieces of paper that are covered in tiny writing. This must be the rough draft of her Destiny Charter. It’s numbered, and there are little arrows telling him where to flip the page.

“I hope you brought your glasses.”

 

Pain shouldn’t have a sound and yet it does it does and he is coming apart he is dying this is dying this is

A dream.

Young stares up at the ceiling, jaw clenched so tightly he can hear the creak of his teeth.

Rush has turned on the light.

It’s murderously cold. Ice has locked up his joints, dug deep into his knees and begun sawing out a home. The crack when he flexes his fingers is unreal.

There’s a high pitched whine that is coming from either his ears or the sound system.

“Calm down before you hurt yourself,” Rush says, his voice sleep rough and irritable.

Young flexes his hands again, trying to feel less like he’s spent the night sleeping in a freezer. It takes a great deal of effort to unlock his jaw.

“What time is it?”

“Too fucking early,” Rush snaps. He’s shivering.

“I thought we’d fixed this. Cold. We fixed this.”

“The repair robots had to make repairs to the life support system. They sacrificed heat in favor of air.”

“Ah.”

Little knives made of ice stab into his joints. He sits up.

They sit in silence.

The whining abruptly cuts off. Rush sighs and rubs his ears.

“We might as well confer on Camille’s little government project. I don’t plan to waste any more time than I need to on the subject.”

 

Greer helps Scott and Rush through the gate. Scott crumples almost immediately and Rush and Greer jump to catch him before he crashes head first onto the deck. His clothes stick to him like he was wet when he put them on, and his breath comes in short panicked gasps.

Young watches himself come through the gate behind them. TJ comes running into the gateroom at the same time.

He didn’t see, because he’d been focused on Scott, how Rush’s eyes had narrowed, as if he was seeing something strange. Rush’s flinch had been hard to miss.

“Come on,” he’d said – he _says_ \- and pulls Rush to his feet. He makes sure Rush doesn’t disappear before TJ gets the chance to check him over.

As they pass, just before Rush pulls away from the colonel holding his elbow, Rush looks over at the Young that’s observing them.

“Do you think,” he says, “if I touched you now, I’d tell you when you were going to die?”

  


"Oh gentle doves, oh turtle doves, and all the birds that be…” a voice says over the speakers. There’s muffled swearing in the background.

“You have the right to veto a decision that affects your area of focus,” Camille continues, voice pitched slightly higher so as to be heard. “However, you must be able to defend this veto effectively, and you are only allowed three vetoes in a seven day period. A poorly defended veto may be subject to second tier vote and overruled.”

“The lentils that in ashes lie, come and pick them up for me.”

“This sounds overly complicated.”

“The good must be put in the dish”

Camille raises an eyebrow. “With the three of us involved, do you think it wouldn’t be?”

“the bad you may eat if you wish”

Young has to admit that there is no easy answer. Not between the three of them.

“We should meet at least once a week to make sure we’re all on the same page. I’m not asking for much – just ten minutes to get everyone up to speed.”

More like a minimum of ten minutes from _Rush_. Young has no doubt he and Camille will spend thirty minutes to an hour talking shop. They already do.

“For most groups a once a week meeting would be a little too much, but in this situation I’m tempted to have us meet once a day. Weekly meetings are a nice middle ground. With such a small requirement – ten to fifteen minutes – we should be able to avoid over managing each other.”

The first lines of “Sexy Sadie” drift through the air, followed by someone’s garbled “turn…damn…already”.

“I’ve been told that the reason the repair robots haven’t touched the sound system is that they want to give us the chance to figure it out.”

Camille smiles. “They want the kids out of the way. Rush would be pleased.”

“He is pleased. I think he’s found his long lost relatives.”

 

“Once we explained what we were trying to do, the repair robots were really helpful. They don’t quite get the concept of movies, but the projector is excellent.”

“You’ve been busy.”

Eli nods.

The room is empty and dimly lit. There are a few benches and a pedestal to hold Eli’s laptop. It doesn’t look like much, but Eli’s bursting with excitement. There’s a distinct possibility that he’s sacrificed a lot of sleep to this project.

“Also! There’ve been a few alterations to the dome layout? As in, they put in a second floor made of very thick glass and lots of rod…hook...things for hanging plants. I haven’t been able to go in yet – no one has. I think they’re waiting for the seedship to re-pressurize the area. Anyway, I can’t get in, but I did get some pretty sweet kino footage; if you want, you can get the command team together and I can show you. They’re doing some interesting remodeling on the old kitchen, too. I think if we tried we could raise sheep or something, but it’s probably a food prep area. You never can tell.”

Eli’s words blur into a flood of enthusiasm. Young keeps an ear on the monologue while he gets a better look at Eli’s pride and joy.

“-Lisa’s great at communicating with the robots? She doesn’t have Rush’s freaky technopathic connection going, but she was doing some complex equations with one the other day and she’s great at getting them to understand what we want. We tried to explain the rec rooms as a way to repair and recharge, because I mean it’s not medical but it is good for our health.”

Young grabs Eli by the shoulders and steers him towards the door.

“They actually seemed pretty excited about it. I mean, for as much as robots with no facial expressions that don’t understand ‘entertainment’ can be excited. Where are we going?”

“The mess.” Which is technically where he’d been going when Eli waylaid him.

“Awesome. Did you know: we’re having hot mush today!”

There’s a very sharp increase in pitch. Young gives Eli a worried look.

“I think that it’s going to taste like that purple strawberry thing? Or meat. I mean, we put leftover meat in everything lately. Not everything – if it was literally everything Lisa would never eat because she’s still a vegetarian, mostly, but yeah, meatwater in everything. I’m pretty sure Becker’s been boiling up thrice-cooked marrowless bones in the hopes of getting more nutrition. Which is weird I guess, that is I think it’s weird but beggars can’t be choosers, right? And it doesn’t taste as awful as artificially flavored protein mix.”

“Eli!”

“Hmm?”

Young stopped them in the middle of the hall. “Take a deep breath.”

Eli takes three very shallow whistling breaths, but he seems to notice how little air he’s been getting. He makes an effort to breathe slowly.

“Good?” Young asks, when there’s a smaller chance of Eli passing out.

Eli clears his throat. “Good. Sorry.”

Young ends up going to the mess alone.

 

“I think a few crew members have been stealing some of the grease to use for lubricant.”

Young pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. Becker stands a few feet behind TJ, wearing the look of a man who deeply regrets his life choices. TJ looks much the same, but her discomfort his mostly hidden underneath a mask of professionalism.

Young puts his fork down.

TJ proceeds to detail the workings of some sort of sex cabal involving thefts during kitchen duty and patients who smell a little too much like food.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’d like permission to address the crew. I understand the desire for sexual contact, but saliva has worked perfectly well for centuries and there are ways to find ah, acceptable substitutes, without stealing from the mess.”

“Of course,” Young says. He tries to think of something else to add, something better than “I would be happy to delegate this to the ends of the earth” or “this conversation seems inexplicably pointed”.

It occurs to him that there’s a way to formally end this conversation, and that he’s forgotten it. Trying to find it only brings up half-forgotten pieces of Ancient and a worsening headache. He lets it go.

He and TJ stare at each other for a long awkward moment, and then TJ bobs her head, and Young clears his throat, and Becker melts gratefully into the background, released from the burden of responsibility.

TJ collects herself with criminal ease. “How are your headaches?”

“Manageable” is accurate, but likely to cause worry; “gone” is a lie she will not accept. Young settles on “better,” because better than crippling is a variation on the truth.

“Better” is something TJ accepts. It’s enough of the truth to erase one or two of the lines around her mouth, relax her shoulders.

“Good,” she says. “I’m happy to hear that.”

 

Young is at the door to Rush’ quarters, trying to push the grease theft issue on to Camille, when Rush slams the door shut in their faces.

“I have an estimate,” Rush says, hand still on the door controls.

“An estimate for what?” Camille asks, being the one who didn’t nearly lose a limb when the door slid shut.

“We’ll meet with the seedship in two weeks.”

It takes half a second for the information to sink in. Then Camille turns into a fountain of questions – how should they tell the crew, how should they set up off world rotation, how will this affect their next exploration team. Young can’t help but wonder how Rush got the ship to give up that information.

 

“It didn’t tell me anything” Rush says. He’s in the middle of sewing paper into a casing of animal hide. “Destiny was wasting most of her processing power on being disgustingly co-dependent.”

Young gives up on the terribly battered harlequin novel he was forcing his way through. “The seedship told Destiny where it was.”

“Of course. I simply recovered the information, processed it, and fed it back to the ship. It’s currently redoing my calculations, but my number is accurate. Two weeks.”

Young drops his head back on the mattress. Two weeks. He lets the knowledge warm him.

“Y’know, the crew quarters a level down are bigger.”

Rush forces his needle through the stack of paper.

“Beds are wider too. Whole lotta space.”

Rush pulls it through.

“Then again….”

Young shifts closer to Rush’s heat. What can he say? He’s a hedonist.

 

The not-cotton harvest is good. Everyone chips in and when the last crate is filled the alcohol comes into play.

A couple of people talk about Robinson Crusoe, and Chloe says it was the next book she and Lisa were going to memorize.

“If you have enough free time to partake in pointless activities, I can provide a solution.”

“It’s for the morale committee,” Chloe protests. “We took requests, and then we memorized books so we could recite them over here. Now that we have permission to put it on paper, Eli and I have been going back through the recordings.”

“We got to do two of them before we lost stone privileges,” Park adds. “The voting was actually pretty vicious, considering what we ended up doing.”

“The first two Oz books,” Young explains when he sees Rush’s expression.

Chloe’s beaming. “Before we were cut off, Lisa and I took turns memorizing chapters. It’s not high lit, but it’s comforting and it’s not a Wormhole X-Treme tie-in.”

“It’s nice to have something new to read that isn’t a bunch of questionably written short stories and the black book.”

“We were going to do more, but then….”

Chloe leaves the sentence hanging.

Rush frowns. “What’s this ‘black book’?”

Chloe and Park both blush.

Young can’t help a small smirk. “I wish I could be surprised that you don’t know.”

Rush’s frown turns into a glare. Young focuses on his drink and lets Chloe and Park explain.

 

The lights are off.

Young finds himself pulled roughly out of sleep. His fingers are locked tight.

The lights are off.

Rush is moving.

Young rolls over, slowly and stiffly, to see Rush sitting up, pulling on his pants. Rush doesn’t say anything to acknowledge him.

After a moment, Young sits up as well. Rush continues to ignore him, now pulling on his over shirt and reaching to tie his boots.

Young sighs.

It takes him very little time to shove his feet into his boots and tug his jacket on. He has to jog to catch up with Rush, who was already halfway down the corridor.

It’s quiet.

The only people up at this hour stick to the bridge or the mess. The odds of them meeting anyone are low.

Rush sets a quick pace, not trying to avoid Young but clearly not encouraging him to keep up. The unfamiliar path leads into a more recognizable part of the ship.

The ship’s solar collectors are enormous. Each plate is as big as Young’s torso. Pipes large enough to walk in lead into the largely inaccessible heart of the ship.

The holding area is swarming with repair robots.

They hadn’t seemed like much before. Twenty or thirty recognizable bots stayed in the habitable area, and it had been easy to believe that only a hundred or so had come from the seedship.

As far as recognition goes, sailboat-bot and carnation-bot are easy to pick out. The rest are faceless metal, a roiling mass of insect feet and tarnished domes.

Rush leans on the railing, staring into the melee. Young joins him.

They watch the bots.

“Is this where you come every night?”

Rush’s lips twitch. “Occasionally.”

Young suspects he won’t know all of Rush’s nighttime haunts unless he commits to stalking him fulltime. He sighs.

“We’re up to half capacity,” Rush says. “If they don’t run out of supplies we may reach seventy by the end of the week.”

Young thinks ‘required – titanium’ and files it away as a question answered. “What are the odds of them running out?”

“High.”

Of course.

Young follows Rush back to their quarters. Rush is off the whole way, walking into bulkheads and muttering under his breath.

He doesn’t go back to sleep.

Eventually, Young does.

 

“I have a confession to make.”

Young looks sideways at Camille, who’s leaning against the rail behind the command chair. “Have you been plotting another coup?”

She gives him a sour smile. “Close. I’ve been talking to the ship.”

Young stares.

Camille looks away. “Well, more talking _at_ it, but I think I’m starting to break through. It made me dream about killing myself a few times, and then killing all of you, and then watching you all die from solar radiation, and then I dreamed about killing all of the Ancients and literally ripping their failsafes out of my chest.”

“Christ.”

“Last night it threw a tantrum. Something like…no one understands me. So alone; no one understands.”

Camille is frowning, tapping the fingers of one hand against the metal rail. “I think…I think I’m picking up more than the ship is trying to say. From what I can piece together, it was…better…before we went into stasis. Knowing that it had to keep us alive but being essentially alone with useless parasites…”

“It made the ship crazy,” Young assumes. “Crazier.”

“I think….” Camille stops and visibly pulls herself together. “Destiny doesn’t want us here – it thinks we’re parasites. But at the same time, it’s terrified of letting us go.”

“Of being alone,” Young says. “Of going back to the way it was before we came along.”

And so the ship will keep them alive and try to teach them its systems, because being infested with semi-sentient ants is better than being alone in the void.

“Atlantis thinks humans are symbiotes, or children. The seedship thinks we’re repair robots.”

Camille smiles. “Atlantis has the ATA gene. It can’t help but know us.”

“And the seedship?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I won’t know, until it gets back.”

“And then you’ll talk to it.”

“Talk _at_ it. And yes.”

 

Four months into being trapped in a rift with mechanical fauna for company, Young found Rush. If Young could have picked anyone to have his back in a soundless alien lab, Rush would be last on the list.

They fought daily, screaming insults that neither of them could hear. Sometimes Rush would run ahead, alone. Sometimes Young would fall back. Sometimes they’d camp in separate trees, where the only dangers were lemurs and ants.

Still they kept coming back to each other. Young would reach out to hit Rush and kiss him instead. They’d lie side by side in front of the fire, and Rush’s mouth would be insulting him while his hands traveled up Young’s chest. And eventually, sometimes, they wouldn’t fight at all.

Can’t stand living with him, can’t bear to live without him. Young understands.

“Camille says I should try talking to you,” Young says to an empty bridge. “She thinks it’ll help.”

Air moves through the ship. They might need to check the filters again.

“I know you’d rather talk to Rush. I think you already do.”

What dreams would Destiny send him, to punish him for meddling? If it was even capable of that.

Young sighs. “We’ll meet the seedship soon.”

 

The crew seems to be perking up. Young watches from the back of the room as they discuss murals, signposts, and shoes.

“Let’s be honest, we can use leaves if we have to.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” James says. “We can make moccasins.”

“We can save the hard-soles for going planetside. That should make them last a little longer.”

“What then?”

Young closes his eyes and lets the noise wash over him.

His headache hasn’t improved at all. He’s pretty sure it’s the ship – it seems to affect him, Camille, and Rush more than anyone else. There’s a connection here that he’s failing to make. He probably won’t understand until they see the seedship again. So it goes.

“There’s a good chance we’ll find something with rubbery to use as a sole.”

“Can we use scales? I’m pretty sure we have some of those left.”

“I draw the line at wearing dead fish on my feet.”

Someone drops down next to him. Young smiles without opening his eyes. “Did Eli have to blackmail you?”

“Hardly,” Rush snaps. “I was looking for you.”

“Were you now? To what do I owe the honor?”

He can practically feel Rush’s sour expression.

The news is hardly unexpected: more repairs.

“We need to get the whole crew involved,” Rush says. “The sooner these parts are replaced, the sooner the robots can focus on hull damage outside the habitable area.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me,” Young says, trying not to sigh. “Two shifts, with one or two people spared for KP?”

He looks over at Rush, not surprised to see dissatisfaction.

“I don’t see why they can’t all work at once. One shift is more than enough.”

“Camille will push for _three_. Two means that someone’s always working; it’s the best compromise you’re going to get.”

Rush says something indistinguishable.

Young closes his eyes again and lets his head fall sideways. Rush barely even bristles. It’s a definite improvement.

 

He’s right: Camille does push for three.

“Overworking them is pointless,” she says, with a scowl that could put Rush to shame. “Three shifts means that everyone is well rested and it allows more than enough time to attend to equally important needs.”

‘Like food’ is left hanging in the air. Park hadn’t been the only one to bring a fruit tree aboard, and Camille had zeroed in on the ship’s plantstock with all the all-consuming drive of a god mid creation. Inman had been quick to move out of her way.

It isn’t a bad thing; Young is content to let her issue edicts so long as she keeps him in the loop. She needs something to distract her now that she’s finished ten months worth of duty rosters.

Her nightly war with the Destiny has her a bit wound up.

“Rush insisted on having us all working around the clock. Two was the best compromise I could get.”

He lets her chew on that a bit, skimming the written report he’d managed to bully out of Rush. Scrap metal made a great paper substitute in a pinch.

“Two,” Camille finally agrees. “And at least ten people to maintain our living standards. Do you have any _good_ news to tell me?”

“Maybe,” Young says, and holds up the chalked report.

“Toothpaste?” Camille asks, incredulous. “Toothpaste and _towels_?”

“There are some little mechanical toothbrushes, but the mechanism seems to be broken. Brody swore on his life he could fix it.”

Camille huffs a laugh. “And apparently power cells for some sort of weapon.”

“Rush says we have to actually build the weapon. The instructions are in Destiny’s database, and there are supposedly a few parts that were prefabbed before the mission began. They’re somewhere else – probably in the ship’s original armory. Something between a zat and a gun.”

“Useful,” Camille says. “That’s less pressure to make bows and arrows, although I wouldn’t count those out just yet.”

“At my next meeting with Telford I’m going to ask about crossbows. There has to be someone with the right security clearance to help us make them.”

They’d been on the schedule back when the seminars were common place, but Homeworld’s schedule and his schedule didn’t always align.

No use fuming about it now.

“As for these shifts…do you want to handle it or should I?”

Camille shakes her head, re-reading the report. “None of the above. I’m going to see if Kerowitz can handle it.”

Young smiles. “Delegating. Nice.”

“I thought so.”

 

 

He’s not quite sure how he got here. One moment he’s stepping in to the laundry room and the next he’s…here. Wherever here is.

He’s not sure what happens when the Destiny hijacks people’s brains like this, but he doesn’t like it. He spares a moment to glare at the ceiling.

In response, a bulkhead slams shut ahead of him.

He sighs.

He has no idea what part of the ship he’s in – it’s clearly outside of the inhabited area, but not so far out of the way that he’d suffocated on the walk over. Maybe he found another transporter.

He turns away from the bulkhead and starts walking.

There are no intersecting corridors, just rooms and sealed doors. The open rooms only have moderate damage, but the others are probably sealed for a reason. Destiny was kind enough not to kill him while it mined him for processing power or whatever; best not to give it an excuse.

Eventually the corridor widens into an atrium. There are deep wells in the floor, each with cushions or railing and monitors inside. In between the wells are consoles, also with chairs. It’s surprisingly well preserved – a few cracked screens, a few broken rails, one or two consoles hanging sideways. The screens are dark.

No.

There’s light coming from one. Young heads towards it, more than a little wary. Either it’s Rush, or they’ve been hosting an invader for a month and a half. He’s not sure which idea is worse.

He doesn’t have long to consider it. Rush is the one slumped over the console. His breath his quick and shallow. He doesn’t react when Young touches him.

The screen is a flurry of activity. Young lifts Rush’s hands from the console and there’s a half-second pause. Rush doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even frown.

“Let me guess,” Young says. He shakes Rush’s shoulders on the off-chance he’ll get results. Rush makes a very soft noise that might be Young’s imagination. “You got lost. Again.”

Physical contact has always been useful. Just this is enough to make Rush blink a little more, to make his eyes move in response to something that’s actually physically present.

Young squats in front of him, trying not to sigh.

He traces a line up Rush’s arm, from the base of his palm to the bend of his elbow and back again. He follows one of the lines in his hand, in the valley that starts in the meat of his thumb and ends at the first crest of his knuckles. Then it’s back to his arm again, from wrist to elbow, from elbow to shoulder, across his collarbone and down his arm to his other hand. The only reaction is a change in Rush’s breathing, but it’s more than he was expecting.

Young takes his hand from Rush’s neck to his face. From there he explores the line of his jaw, his cheekbones, the dip where the bones of his face made room for his eyes, trying to ground him. He lingers more than a little at Rush’s mouth. Rush stares at him like he’s grown two heads.

Young stares back as he takes his hand lower, which only serves to highlight that this grounding method has unexpected side effects.

Young looks Rush in the eye, eyebrows raised.

Well, his knees hate him already.

He keeps his eye out for a reaction as he opens Rush’s pants, but he doesn’t get one.

“If you ignore this I’ll be really insulted,” he says, and takes Rush in hand.

It’s not the best blowjob he’s ever given, but Rush gasps like he’s drowning and fists Young’s hair.

“You are incorrigible,” he gasps. His voice is wrong – a little slurred, a little…robotic. But he’s not lost in his head anymore.

Young hums, more than a little pleased with himself.

He pulls off. Rush growls at him; it’s possibly the best sound he’s heard all day.

“Welcome back,” he says.

The screen is just a screen, nothing strange about what’s on it. Rush’s accent, when he calls Young an asshole, is normal. Perfect.

 

The alcoves are small, but the cushions are just like the mattresses on the beds – a little too firm. The console where Young had found Rush went dark as soon as they walked away from it. Young leans back against the metal wall and watches Rush light up the screen in front of them.

“You come here often?” he asks.

Rush doesn’t answer. The blur of information across this screen is brief; Rush quickly settles on a map.

“This is the part of the ship we’re in,” Rush says. “Below us is storage. There are several hull breaches to the north, but beyond that…”

The map scrolls forward.

“There.” Rush taps the screen, highlighting a series of rooms. “Destiny’s main armory. It’s almost entirely empty.”

Young sits a little straighter. “Almost being the key word. Did you find us a path?”

“Possibly. I was interrupted before I could be sure.”

Young rolls his eyes. “The ship hijacked my brain to get me here. Blame Destiny if you’re going to blame anyone.”

Rush harrumphs. It is possibly the most ridiculous sound Young has ever heard.

Young dreams of peeling back Rush’s skin to see wires and circuits instead of muscles and veins.  
He wakes up alone. No one but him sees him vomit into the trashcan. Small mercies.

 

There’s a knot of people in Rec One staring at the cakes of toothpaste with blatant unease.

Finally, Greer snatches one up, and pulls one of the recently repaired toothbrushes out of his pocket. He scrapes the flat of the brush across the edge of the cake, and puts the curved bristles in his mouth. There’s a loud buzz as the toothbrush does its job.

Greer turns the toothbrush off. The entire room watches, rapt, as Greer finds someone’s empty cup and spits into it.

He shrugs. “Not bad.”

In a back corner of the room, Young turns to Camille with a smug smile. “We’re having yams today.”

“Don’t taunt me with what I’m not eating,” she says.

“He’s using the dried sweetener instead of the syrup.”

“Keep talking and I’ll let Eli call that weapon a phaser.”

Young knows when to surrender. “I have some votes for Z2, since it’s the second version of the zat we’ve seen.”

“To be honest, I don’t care what we call it. I’m just worried we’ll run into the frog aliens – or worse – before we make one.”

Young nods, scratching the back of his neck. “Next time I talk to Telford, I’ll see if someone can ask Atlantis to contact Destiny. Maybe the city can talk some sense into it.”

He waits for a reply, but Camille stares vacantly into space. After a moment he reaches out and gives her a gentle push.

“Camille. _Camille_.”

Nothing.

He sighs, looking around the room.

One of the civilians is caught in a loop of taking a pen out of her pocket, putting it on the table, and pocketing it again. Another takes the pen away and slaps her on the back.

Young snaps his fingers right under Camille’s nose. She jumps.

“Welcome back,” he says.

She nods at him, pale-faced. “Do we have any means of recreating the toothpaste?” she asks.

“Obviously everyone will receive at least half a bar, but even that won’t get us too far.”

“How far out are you thinking? We found at least a thousand. Even if you brush twenty-four hours a day, it’ll take a year before you need another.”

“That’s a generous estimate.”

Greer takes another bar out of the pile. Inman picks one up and sniffs it, eyeing Greer with suspicion.

The pile of toothpaste is gone in twenty minutes.

 

Scott has been taking the crew on longer and longer runs through the ship.

This isn’t a problem. Young’s joined them a few times; they wind their way through recently cleared areas, and a week ago they’d found something that was hopefully just a water fountain.

The run isn’t a problem.

“All of them?” Young says into his radio. He’s repeating himself. “At once?”

“Yes, all,” Eli says. “I was able to get a kino in there before Destiny slammed the door in my face. None of them are responding. Same dead eyed stare, same zombie shuffle, same – ow!”

“Dr. Rush is trying to open the door,” says Chloe, who must have just hit Eli. “There’s a work crew on the other side that he wants moved before they get, um, confused.”

“What are they doing?”

“Nothing. Well, not ‘nothing’, they’re doing some things, but ‘nothing’ in the sense that they aren’t doing anything important. One guy’s running in a circle, a bunch are just standing around, I think that’s Evans walking into a wall. Geez, you’d think the jolt would’ve woke him up by now. Scott’s pacing around and drinking out of his best fr-ow! Okay, I get it, no jokes about the water bottle.”

“I’m on my way.”

He leaves his team to their own devices.

James is in the group Rush wants moved. They’re still working normally, but James is moving incredibly slow.

“You know,” she says, stopping to lean her head against the intact portion of the bulkhead. “Something’s just occurred to me.”

“What would that be?”

“It’s a computer, right?”

He gets the rest of the group lined up. “Leave your equipment,” he tells them.

“Shouldn’t there be a way to force quit whatever program it’s running. End process or something.”

Young has to pull one of the civilians to his feet; he’s still holding a wrench, but now that he’s on his feet he isn’t working on the same bolt over and over.

“There has to be a button for that. Control-Alt-Delete for spaceships.”

“Get going,” he says. He stops in front of James. “Can you walk?”

James looks up at him and shrugs. “There ought to be a button.”

Young takes that as a no. He helps her up.

“Let’s go, lieutenant,” he says, giving her a gentle shake.

Two days. They’ll meet the seedship in two days.

If they weren’t so close to the end, he’d probably take a hammer to some sensitive equipment. He still might.

By the time they reach the mess, James is walking under her own power.

“I’ll get everyone inside, sir.”

He nods and falls back.

“Give me an update,” he says into his radio.

“Evans is unconscious. I think Scott might be waking up.”

“Why aren’t the doors open yet?”

“Destiny has the room sealed; we’re trying to find a work around that doesn’t involve destroying the door.”

Young sighs. “Will you please just fucking stop this?” he says to the ceiling.

Two more days. Just two. More. Days.

 

It’s movie night, but no one’s particularly excited. They gather in the rec room anyway rather than be alone. Some slept. A few made a valiant attempt to care about the Wormhole X-Treme movie.

Young struggles to stay wake. Every bone in his body aches.

This entire experience has been a tortuous slog through pain and frustration. He’ll be happy when Destiny reunites with the seedship – hopefully forever – and all of this is done.

He jumps when a warm weight settles next to him. He drags his eyes open.

“Why bother fighting it?” Rush says. He sounds about as exhausted as Young feels.

At times like this, when the ship weighs his mind down with lead, Rush seems like a hallucination.

“I have work to do,” Young says.

“And I suppose this is work? Sitting in a room with your eyes closed with every other sorry –”

“Let’s not pretend you’re any better. You’re here aren’t you?”

Rush doesn’t have a comeback. Young nods.

The movie is awful but he makes himself watch it.

 _Two more days_.

**Author's Note:**

>  _IT. IS. FINISHED._ Originally for the h/c bingo prompt: “abandonment issues”, and now also for the trope bingo prompt "locked in". Ugh I am embarrassed by how long this took to write.


End file.
